


Collecting (Evidence)

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: Hazard - Richard Marx (Music Video)
Genre: Case Fic, Friendship, Gen, Neurodiversity, Synesthesia, neurodivergent character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 17:36:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18428870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: Sometimes there aren't two sides to a story.





	Collecting (Evidence)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joanne_c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_c/gifts).



> I hope you like this!

He’s in handcuffs before he even knows what happened. Hot breath on his neck and a knee in his back. He struggles at first, but he stops when he realizes they’ve won.

The full force of the news hits him in stages, first under the sickly bright bulbs in the police station. Sheriff Stanton is pacing, glaring, daring him to make one wrong move or say one thing that’s out of place.

The thought of getting out of town comes in any moment that he’s not completely lost in how impossible yet very possible all of this is. One thing is clear: Mary is gone. He feels it in his gut.

Something makes him stare at Stanton despite himself. Daring him right back. Even if he knows that he can’t match a fully prepared “officer of the law.” Stanton’s own law. He’s always been the one-man lawman show in this town, and everyone knows it. There are people he lets play deputy or sit in the back with him, but what Stanton says goes.

Of course, he has more words about Stanton on the inside of his head than can come out in the questioning room. He answers the best he can, but his mind comes to a standstill at certain points and when he realizes the Sheriff has been-- _collecting_ \--this whole time. That’s when it comes apart. When it comes down to the fact that Stanton has his scarf, he starts to fall apart in earnest.

Soon after that he’s behind bars for the night with no real way to get himself back out. His mother has been gone for longer than he remembers having her in his life, and he doesn’t have a friend in this town who isn’t-- isn’t--

Gone.

Mary Crenshaw was the first person in this place who saw him for who he was. The first to see him as a real person. Now, just because of that, she was gone. 

The night in the cell is harrowing. No one else is there with him. It’s too quiet, and he doesn’t have anything else to distract him from the crushing grief. If he could just get out of the cell--well--he’d still be grieving. But at least he wouldn’t be doing it in Stanton’s holding pen. His territory.

A siren blares through the night and he smells smoke. Fire. “It’s his place. The freak,” he hears.

There’s nowhere to go from here emotionally. It doesn’t even register much what they really mean.

He never had a home in this town anyway.

*~*~*

Morning comes, and Gina Willurby, the clerk, enters the room with keys jangling. “You have a benefactor,” she says, and makes sure he can see the bewilderment on her face.

_Mary._

No. Mary’s gone.

A woman is waiting for him, looking determined. “My name’s Jill. Jill Plinth,” she says. “You’re in the news and I-- I came here as quick as I could. I had to drive. Uh. I’m sorry. About last night.”

“Jill. Blueberries,” he says.

“What? Oh. Right. Mary told me.”

He studies her carefully. “It’s..” he says, and offers the barest shrug. “Sorry. I forget sometimes. What are you doing here?”

“Listen. Let’s get out of here and I’ll tell you on the way.”

Out of here.

It starts to dawn on him why she's here, and with her standing beside him looking expectant they do let him go. They let him go.

Once outside she says, “I’m a friend of Mary’s. Actually, she--” Tears spring up in her eyes, “She’s my best friend. And I know-- _I know_ \--she trusted you.”

“Oh.”

“I’m getting my degree in journalism. I’m almost done. But if they hang you out to dry for no reason other than, uh, spite, then I don’t really want a part in it. Not after this. But I thought I could maybe help you. No funny business. I just want Mary to-- It wouldn’t be right. I know she’d be the first person to tell them you didn’t do this.”

“Thank you. No funny business.”

*~*~*

“Mary told me her side almost every night. I want to hear it from you. What were you two doing? She trusted you a lot.”

“I don’t know. I do know...everywhere she went… there was music. More than anyone. I could see it. And one day I told her. And she wasn’t scared of that.”

“Right. Blueberries. Other people have been, huh?”

“Scared of me? I don’t know. They act like it, but--” Pain comes over his face and he hears Jill sigh.

“Sorry. Okay, come on. I know a lot of people in this small town, and I’ll see what I can--”

“Jill.”

“Yeah?”

“Start with Stanton if you can,” he whispers. “He was always following her. He was-- She said she thought he was taking pictures.”

“I remember. Start at the top. Got it.”

“She was beautiful,” he says, “But this was something else.”

“Don’t I know it.”

*~*~*

He knows Jill is risking everything. Her degree. Her reputation. He knows it's not for him exactly; it's for Mary, and Jill's sense of justice. He is very grateful. He tells her he suspects there are tire tracks by the river and they feel like wet mud. He's right. They find them.

He cuts his hair and reminds himself not to bring up any colors or his feelings in front of townsfolk this time. Not while he's defending himself, or ever again. 

The rancid taste he gets in his mouth when he thinks of the murder is no one's business. The way Stanton has always felt sharp and guilty isn't either.

Jill knows people who know people, and maybe they're the right ones. But more importantly than that, people can see she is standing by him. She walks tall and proud as she makes her way through the town, and the people around Hazard try to pretend they've never done anything to him, even though he had to rent a room because his trailer is gone. 

He should be gone too, or wishes he could be, but he's got a lawyer from out of town and a murder to solve.

*~*~*

They whisper that he killed his mother and they always knew it wasn’t an accident. They know where he’s staying, and his lawyer has to get him moved from there as well.

Reporters come in, and state police, who put a protective escort on him but he just stays in his room trying to stay calm

He would be having panic attacks and maybe he still will, but when Jill sees the anxiety on his face she touches his arm and says, “Hey. Hey. Ryan. Tell me something.”

“What?”

“What was Mary’s music like?”

“It was the most beautiful I’ve ever heard,” he says, and for just long enough he’s lost in the memory of her music again.


End file.
